Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Nevertheless

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

August 7, 2016

There’s
a sound that tires make on the highway. It’s a steady thump as the
wheels roll over the endless pavement. I associate that sound with
the car trips of my childhood. When it was dark, and everyone but my
dad, the driver, was asleep, I would listen to that thump, thump,
thump and know that we were getting closer to where we were going.
When I was a little girl, our main vacation destination was
Minneapolis, Minnesota. That was my parents’ hometown, and that’s
where the majority of our extended family lived. Because we were the
rebels who went south, we were the ones who would pack up the car
every summer – and sometimes at Christmas – and head the car
northward.

Getting
ready to leave town was an elaborate ritual. My father was the
primary driver, so he would sleep. My sister and brother would both
sleep. As a treat, I would get to sleep downstairs on the couch. My
mother would stay up doing every scrap of laundry she could find and
finish packing. Then at about 5:30 am, we would hit the road. We
weren’t even out of Nashville before everyone would fall back
asleep; except
my dad, thankfully.
Then sometime about the middle of Kentucky, we would get to stop for
breakfast.

These
were long car trips, about
14 hours. With rare exception
we would make that drive in a day. I remember only one or two times
when we actually stopped at motels – and that was because we got
stuck in a terrible thunderstorm one summer, and hit icy roads one
winter. Along with the sound of the wheels on pavement, I also could
generally guess how close we were to Minnesota or Tennessee by what I
could see outside of my window. Even before I could read the road
signs, I could sense our location. And it wasn’t because I had
memorized specific landmarks or could pinpoint exactly where we were
in any given state. I knew because of the shape and contour of the
land that flanked either side of the road. If we were driving through
what seemed to be one enormous, never-ending farm, that was Illinois.
The flatter the land became, the closer we were to Minnesota. On the
return trip, I knew we were getting closer to Tennessee, because by
Kentucky the land would get hilly again and the roads would get
curvier and twistier. I didn’t have to read any signs to know that
we getting closer to our destination.

I
wish I could read the landscape of my life that easily; especially in
terms of following God’s call. Am I doing the right thing? Am I
not? Was this the direction I should have chosen? How nice it would
be to look at the scene around me and think, “Yep, I’m getting
closer to where God is calling me. I can see it.”

I
don’t know about you, but when it comes to following God, I could
use some clearer signs. I don’t need them all the time, but every
once in a while it would be nice to see some indicator that I’m
going where I’m supposed to. Maybe the clouds could periodically
reshape themselves into an arrow pointing in the direction I should
be heading. Perhaps a road sign or a billboard with specific
instructions could pop up periodically. Or
why
can’t God email me or send me a text?

“Amy, go here. Amy, do this.”

It
would make life and being faithful so much easier. But that’s not
how it works is it? That’s not how God works. If God did work like
that, we wouldn’t be talking about faithfulness, we’d be talking
about certainty. Those are two different things entirely.

In
these well-known and beloved words, the preacher in Hebrews offers a
description of faith, as well as a long list of folks who had the
kind of faith described.

“Now
faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things
not seen. Indeed, by faith, our ancestors received approval. By faith
we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, that
what is seen was made from things that are not visible.”

Now
faith is the assurance of things hoped for. As I understand it, the
Greek word translated as “assurance,” hypostasis,
denotes a foundation. The assurance of faith is our foundation. We
stand firmly on the foundation of faith, we build our lives on the
foundation of faith. How firm a foundation is not just a hymn we
sing. According to these verses, it is the essence of faith. That is
our assurance.

The verse continues with the
words, “the conviction of things not seen.” We believe, we are
convinced that God is present though God cannot be seen. We are
convinced that there is more to this world than what meets the eye.
We are convinced that God’s kingdom is here in our midst, even
though physical evidence suggests the opposite. When we are faithful,
we are convinced about the truth of God even though we cannot see
God.

And just in case we think that
this kind of faith is impossible, the preacher gives us a roll call
of, as one commentator put it, the hall of fame of the faithful.
These folks serve as examples of this kind of faith. We don’t read
all of those examples in our verses today, but we do read about
Abraham. Abraham had a good life going. He had property and
possessions. He and his wife Sarah were well-off. Their great sadness
was not having children, but when it came to riches, they had those.
But God said, “Go. Leave. Leave this land and go to a land, a place
that I will show you. You will receive an inheritance greater than
your wildest dreams. You have no children? Look at the stars in the
sky, look at the sand below your feet. Your descendants will be as
numerous as the stars and as countless as the sand.”

So Abraham obeyed. He went. He
followed. He left all that he had, all that he knew, all that was
familiar and safe behind and he followed God. He lived as a stranger,
as a foreigner in the land of promise. He never again had a home with
a foundation. He never actually saw the fulfillment of God’s
promise, but still he followed.

Many
thoughts come to mind when I read Abraham’s
and Sarah’s
story, especially through the lens of these verses in Hebrews. First,
their faith overwhelms me. God said, “Go,” and they went. That’s
amazing. But here’s the thing, God said,
“Go.” I can’t say for sure that I’ve actually heard God’s
voice telling me to go somewhere. I’ve discerned that voice in
other ways, but have I heard God’s voice echoing from the sky? No.
But apparently Abraham had those kinds of encounters with God. Yes,
God took the form of visiting travelers, but still there seemed to be
a real voice relaying definitive instructions. My first thought,
then, is that surely it was easier for Abraham to be faithful because
he heard that voice.

But we don’t get the
day-to-day description of their journey. I would suspect that there
were times when God seemed to be taking a break from the task of
leading them to this unseen land. I think it was Frederick Buechner
who wrote that if you had a chance to talk with one of these faithful
hall of famers, if you could tap them on the shoulder and ask them
how following God was going, they might have shared a different
version. Were they convinced every single day that God was leading
them? Was Abraham convinced that Sarah would have a child? I mean,
really? How does the preacher of Hebrews put it, “Therefore from
one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born...”

This
one as good as dead? I suspect that even Abraham had days when he
wondered and struggled and worried if God was leading them, if God’s
promises of descendents and land would actually become a reality.
While the birth of Isaac was the fulfillment of one promise, Abraham
would never see the fulfillment of the other. He died, as did Isaac
and Jacob, without seeing the entirety of God’s promises come true.

But still, even when he may
struggled, even when he may have found it all but impossible, Abraham
had faith. Abraham was faithful. Abraham followed when God said,
“Go.” Abraham was willing to do what God asked, even if that
request was heartbreaking, terrifying and made no sense: think of
God’s asking for Isaac to be sacrificed. Abraham was faithful.

That is the challenge of faith.
If we are faithful, then we are assured that we have a foundation
that cannot be destroyed. If we are faithful, then we are convinced
that even though we cannot see God or see in the visible world what
God is doing, God is still there, acting, loving, creating. In fact
what we see in the world may seem completely opposite to what we
believe God is doing, nevertheless, we have faith that what we see
does not negate what we don’t.

It would seem that faith and
being faithful is about trusting. William Sloan Coffin referred to it
as “trusting without reservation.” Being faithful is about
trusting in God’s promises. It is being assured and convinced that
there is more to this world than what our senses can take in. Faith
is holding fast to God’s nevertheless.

We may hear the news each day
and see the violence and the heartbreak and hatefulness that seems
rampant, and wonder how God’s kingdom could possibly be in the
midst of all this; but nevertheless we put our faith in the promise
that it is.

We may struggle with whether we
are doing the right thing or going the right way; after all, the
signs are not always easy to spot. But nevertheless, we trust that
God is leading us, that God is calling us, that we are following even
when we stumble and drift off course.

It
seems to me that when we trust God without reservation, we trust
God’s nevertheless. I’m not saying that it’s easy. No one seems
to struggle with doubt and worry more than I do. But then I remember
Mother Theresa. When she died, her journals revealed that she
doubted, that she wrestled with God and faith and trust. But never
did she stop doing what she believed she was called to do. Never did
she give into that doubt. She just kept on, being faithful, living
faithfully. She lived and loved based not on what she could see but
on God’s nevertheless.

God’s nevertheless is our good
news. It is our assurance. It is our conviction. We may feel that God
is absent, that God has forgotten us, or that we can no longer hear
God’s call, but nevertheless God is with us; God remembers, God
keeps God’s promises. God is faithful to us. So may we be faithful
to God.